


Present

by laugh_a_latte



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Angst, Birthday, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Other, Prompt Fic, Sad boi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23728957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laugh_a_latte/pseuds/laugh_a_latte
Summary: Brooke remembers Michael's birthday.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	Present

**Author's Note:**

> Yay another prompt fic~! This prompt is by Komodovaran and the prompt will be at the end since it involved spoilers but it's essentially some gift giving angst ;)  
> This fic is in the same universe as Bracelets all my other fics that follow those lines! Should still make sense without reading them though!

Michael sighs, glad this day is over as he puts in the combination to his locker, ready to get home and get stoned. He finally gets it open, but before he can do anything, a small box falls out of it, startling him. It hits the floor with a whack, and he flinches at the sound.

“Surprise!” Brooke yells behind him, just as he’s recovering, causing him to jump about a foot in the air all over again. He hears her giggle behind him.

Michael spins around, willing his fists to unclench and his heart rate to calm down. He doesn’t like unexpected noises or unexpected boxes falling out of his locker or unexpected anything, thank you very much, but of course Brooke doesn’t know that, so Michael takes a breath and speaks as if she didn’t almost just send him into cardiac arrest. “Hi.”

Brooke grins lazily at him and scoops the small box off the floor, holding it out to him earnestly.

“What’s—this?”

“It’s your birthday!” Michael feels his heart flip all over again, then fall through the floor, but for an entirely different reason.

Because yeah, it is his birthday, and Brooke was the only one to remember.

And, well, it’s not like he expected anyone to remember. Even if everyone’s Jeremy’s friend now, thereby making them his friends by default, no one’s ever thought to ask when his birthday was. Even that one time they were talking about astrology and birthdays and star signs and all that at the lunch table, and everyone else got asked. But it's fine, really.

And, well, why should they care? And it’s not like it really matters, anyways. Michael’s birthdays have never exactly been the best, from that one where even his mom’s forgot because grandpa was in the hospital, to last year when Jeremy took the Squip and stopped talking to him. That one really sucked.

Not even Michael wants to remember his birthday, if he’s being honest.

And Michael can’t exactly blame Jeremy for forgetting today. He’s had a rough time remembering things about Michael here and there since the Squip, like some small part of it is still affecting him, trying to wipe Michael from his life. Little things, like his phone number, or locker combination. Or birthday.

But it doesn’t really matter.

So Michael doesn’t know what to think, looking into Brooke’s big blue eyes, and that little box in her outstretched hand, except that it’s weird that maybe, to Brooke, it does matter.

“How did you know?” Michael’s eyebrows tilt up, and he has to remind himself to breathe.

“It’s a secret!” Brooke laughs, then she just smiles. “I work in the front office and might have sneaked a peek at your file.”

Michael shakes his head at her, then lifts his hand and takes the box, feeling completely outside of himself. 

“Thank you,” he says, staring at it. It’s yellow, with a blue bow on it, and there’s a little tag that addresses it to Michael, in Brooke’s neat script.

She remembered. And she got him something. She didn’t have to do that. Michael feels weird.

“You haven’t even opened it yet, silly,” Brooke teases, tilting her head and wrapping her red lips around the straw in her La Croix can.

Michael shakes his head, disbelieving, pulling the bow off as blood rushes through his ears, drowning out every sound around him. He takes off the lid.

And sitting there, on neatly folded tissue paper, is a bracelet.

And suddenly that blood rushing in his ears becomes louder. He feels the floor tilt a little, and feels his muscles tense all over, to prevent him from tilting with it.

“—because you like bracelets so much!” Brooke is saying, far away.

Michael pulls his eyes up to hers, and they’re filled with such warmth, crinkled at the corners because her face can’t quite handle how big her smile is.

And Michael tries to get himself to relax again, willing his muscles to stop tensing up, telling his heart to stop beating so fast, but this time he can’t quite do it.

Because Michael does wear a lot of bracelets, so he _should_ like them, that would make _sense_ , and that’s so observant and kind and everything of Brooke to notice that.

But Brooke’s wrong, because Michael _doesn’t_ wear them because he likes them, but there’s no way he can tell her that, and now he has to pull himself together before Brooke starts getting suspicious, and he has to plaster on that fake smile he’s got perfected down to science and thank her, but he still can’t quite breathe, let alone smile—

And then the edges of Brooke’s smile begin to drop, and fuck, Michael couldn’t do it fast enough, and now—

“You like bracelets, right?” Brooke asks slowly, voice pitching as she tilts her head the other way, her long blonde hair falling over her face. She tucks it behind her ear, pouting her lips at him.

“I—” Michael starts, trying to say he really actually does like it and that this bracelet is awesome, except he can’t quite get it out.

“This one is super cool!” Brooke continues, the weird hurt look in her eyes wavering as she does. “It’s made by this eco company and all their bracelets are made from plastic _from the ocean!_ So this bracelet is literally saving the planet, Michael!”

And before he knows it, the box is out of his hand in Brooke’s, and she’s lifting the bracelet off the neat tissue paper, and Michael’s heart leaps from his stomach to his throat because now that it’s out of the box, he can see that this bracelet is _clear_ , meaning that it definitely won’t do the job he needs his bracelets to do, the reason he wears them, to help him cover everything—

And then, Brooke’s hand brushes against his hand, and she takes it with cold fingers to put the bracelet on for him, and _no._ That _cannot_ happen, because then she’ll see, and she’ll know, and Michael will totally ruin this incredibly sweet thing she’s trying to do for him. But then Michael’s body reacts before his mind, and he pulls his arm away from her, so quickly it hits the locker behind him, making a slam so loud that Brooke screams.

Michael hears the bracelet hit the floor in the silence that follows, his elbow tingling.

He coughs over his breath, because he needs to breathe and forgot about that. He catches Brooke’s eye.

And she’s looking at him with a completely different expression from before, a sort of hesitant confusion and careful question that he never wants to see there again.

And before she gets the chance to put everything together and ask that question, Michael grabs his backpack, and leaves as quickly as he can without running.

And he’s so sorry, because he most definitely ruined Brooke’s day.

And he’s sorry, because she really tried to do something nice for him.

But mostly, he’s sorry that Brooke even bothered to remember his birthday at all.

Some things really are just better off forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> Komodovaran's prompt was for Brooke to give Michael a 4ocean bracelet, since she notices that he "likes" bracelets, but since he wears bracelets for other reasons, angst ensues! ;)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments appreciated <3


End file.
